1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates broadly to field of semiconductor devices (and associated fabrication methodology) and, in particular, to semiconductor devices (and associated fabrication methodology) that utilize modulation doped quantum well heterojunctions to realize optoelectronic/electronic devices.
2. State of the Art
Modulation-doped quantum well heterojunction transistors—including well known Pseudomorphic Pulsed Doped High Electron Mobility Transistors (Pulsed Doped PHEMT), which are sometimes referred to as Pulsed Doped Modulation Doped Field Effect Transistors (Pulsed Doped MODFET) or Pulsed Doped Two Dimensional Gas Field Effect Transistors (Pulsed Doped TEGFET)—have become well recognized for their superior low noise and high frequency performance and are now in demand in many high frequency applications (e.g., front end amplifier in wireless communications systems and in Monolithic Microwave and Millimeterwave IC (MMIC) designs).
GaAs/InGaAs/AlxGa1-xAs is the III–V material system of choice for these devices because of the ability to grow high optical/electrical quality epitaxial layers by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Alternatively, strained silicon heterostructures employing silicon-germanium (SiGe) layers have been used to produce such devices.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,827,320 to Morkoc et al. discloses a pseudomorphic HEMT (PHEMT) structure that employs a layer of strained InGaAs (undoped) between a GaAs substrate and a layer of undoped AlGaAs to form a quantum well (QW) defined by the strained InGaAs layer. A layer of n+ doped AlGaAs is formed on the undoped AlGaAs layer. A layer of n+ GaAs is formed on the layer of n+ doped AlGaAs. The layer of n+ GaAs facilitates an ohmic contact to source/drain electrodes. A gate electrode of aluminum is recessed below the layer of n+ GaAs and a portion of the n+ AlGaAs layer by wet chemical etch and evaporation of aluminum.
The PHEMT structure has been very successful in producing microwave transistors that operate well into the multi-gigahertz regime, initially being used extensively in military systems and now finding their way into commercial products, particularly in the area of cellular communications. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in combining the PHEMT with optical capability because of the difficulty in propagating very high frequency signals to and from the integrated circuit by coaxial lines. Combining electronic with optoelectronic components monolithically gives rise to the concept of the optoelectronic integrated circuit (OEIC). However, there are serious problems encountered because of the dissimilar nature of the structures of the FET, the pn junction laser, PIN diode, etc.
To achieve this goal, inversion channel heterojunction structures created from a single epitaxial growth have been used to realize a range of optoelectronic devices including lasers, detectors and field effect transistors (FETs). An exemplary inversion channel heterojunction structure is described in Taylor and Kiely, “Theoretical and Experimental Results for the Inversion Channel Heterostructure Field Effect Transistors”, IEE Proceedings-G, Vol. 140, No. 6, December 1993. In this structure, for the region between the modulation doping layer and the gate of the semiconductor surface, the doping of this region is substantially p type in order to provide a low resistance ohmic contact for the gate of the FET.
However, the high p-type doping of this region creates many problems, including:                i) the effects of free carrier absorption makes formation of a vertical cavity laser difficult;        ii) forming a depletion-type FET by implanting n-type dopant is difficult; this difficulty stems from the difficulty in controlling the dopant density in the bulk region; more specifically, compensating a large p density with a large n density to obtain a lower p density is difficult to control in a bulk region (but much easier in a delta doped region);        iii) controlling the threshold voltage of an enhancement type FET is difficult because the input capacitance is a function of doping which is harder to control than layer thickness; and        iv) producing effective current funneling for inducing lasing is difficult; more specifically, it is very desirable to create a pn junction by N type implantation to steer the current in this structure since this would be compatible with the overall approach to building the FET devices; the heavy p doping bulk layers makes it difficult to create junction isolation that has low leakage.        
Heterojunction Bipolar Transistor (HBT) devices have also been developed for high frequency applications. An HBT device includes a base layer structure disposed between an emitter layer structure and a collector layer structure. The base layer structure may utilize a graded composition (as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,037,616) or a modulation doped QW structure (as described in U.S. Pat. 5,003,366). A transferred-substrate process may be used wherein the emitter is epitaxially grown on a substrate, and the collector is epitaxially grown on the top of the sample. By depositing the collector as a small feature on the top surface of the sample and etching a collector mesa, a minimum collector capacitance is realized. At this point, the sample is flipped and mounted on a low resistance ground plane, and the substrate below the emitter is removed by etching so that processing of the emitter and base can begin in a conventional manner from the top side. An exemplary transferred-substrate process for HBTs is described in D. Mensa et al., “Transferred-substrate HBTs with 254 GHz FT,” Electron. Lett., April 1999, 35(7), pp. 605–606. These prior art devices provide for improved current gain and cutoff frequency with respect to prior art silicon bipolar transistors. However, it is difficult to realize a range of optoelectronic devices (including lasers, detectors, FET devices, waveguide devices) from the epitaxial growth that is used to form such HBT devices.